Iran, a tourist destination in 2017
Jan 04, 2017 03:25 UTC
Tourism is a collection of interactions which is made among tourists, nature travellers, travel organizations, host governments and local people. Tourism takes place during the travel of a tourist.
This process includes any activities from planning for travel to travel, stay, return and even reminding its memories. It also includes purchase of various commodities and interaction between the host and the guest.
Tourism has various types. Familiarity with each of these is of great significance for planning and preparation, for; the requests and services needed by various tourists are not the same. For instance, tourists who travel for visiting their friends and families often do not need hotels or even restaurants but they use other facilities. The rural tourist is likely to have no desire to urban services and will stay in a village during his trip.
Accordingly, international observers and organizations, in view of various criteria, have presented several classifications on tourism. Ethnic, cultural, historic, nature and commercial or business tourism are based on motivation. Tourism is also classified on the basis of location, purpose, theme and destination and, for sure, today every country tries to absorb tourists through new definitions of tourism and the facilities granted to them. The World Tourism Organization W.T.O categorizes tourist activities as follows: Cultural tourism, natural tourism, commercial tourism, religious tourism and sport tourism and medical tourism.
Recently, the website Business Insider active in the field of trade and technology news has examined different countries in terms of tourist attractions. The website has introduced 50 countries as the best sites for travel in the next Christian New Year and has referred to Iran as an important destination of tourism. This list and magazines such as Travel National Geographic and Lonely Planet and websites such as Trip Advisor have a great impact on determining the destinations of tourists.
Business Insider has predicted growth of arrival of tourists in Iran and has citied the reason for this increase to be the increase of direct flights to Tehran from cities like Paris and London and it has also referred to construction of several new hotels in Iran.
In the recent years, Iran has hosted over 5 million foreign tourists with over 7.5 billion dollars income per year. It is hoped that by the year 2025, Iran will be the host of 20 million foreign tourists. Presenting visa at the airport for people from 190 countries and launching of issuing electronic visa are among the plans to be done for attracting more tourists from abroad.
In fact the unmatched security in Iran is an important factor for attracting more tourists. The Islamic Republic of Iran is a secure and safe country not just in West Asia but throughout the world. This comes despite imposing new restrictions by the US for non-American nations in traveling to Iran. It is the law which is protested by many European states as unjust. Nonetheless Iran's security and peace during the critical situation in West Asia caused not only the eastern tourists but also the Europeans and Americans to pick Iran as their trip destination.
Inserting the name of the Islamic Republic above countries like Portugal, Peru, France, Japan, Antarctica and Italy comes at a time when in the region, only the name of Oman and at the end of the list Abu Dhabi of UAE are the only points of tourism which are safe and secure for tourism in the coming Christian year.
On the list, no mention is made of Turkey. According to existing figures, the German and European tourists in the recent months have removed Turkey from the list of their travel and placed instead the secure countries including Greece, Iran and the Caspian Sea’s eastern states. In addition, according to the recent months’ reports, trip requests for European countries have decreased. The attacks in Paris, Brussels and other European countries inflicted a heavy blow on tourism of those countries. Therefore, on the one hand, existence of peace and security inside the borders of Iran and introduction of historic and valuable attractions on the other hand caused foreign tourists to place Iran on the map of their travel and earn a better status in the field of international tourism.
In 2015, the World Economic Forum in a report titled "The tourism and travel competitiveness index" by studying 141 countries, finally introduced Iran as the most economical and cheapest tourist destination in the world. The report includes slight characteristics of 141 economies countries along with the information tables and 90 indexes indicating competition in the field of travel and tourism from 2013 to 2015. Based on this report, after Iran, Egypt and Indonesia were introduced as the second and third economical destinations of tourism by the WEF. Often price competitiveness in travel and tourism industry or the low expenses of travel to a country increases the popularity of the country for tourists and investment.
Last year, Iran in the light of tourist attractions such as Persepolis complex and the historic and beautiful cities of Isfahan and Shiraz has been placed at the top of tourist sites in the world by international publications such as Financial Times and Guardian. Moreover, Ireland’s Independent publication spoke of a 200% growth in the sale of tours to Iran, considering glorious mosques and religious sites, the diversified nature, interesting history and the unrivaled hospitality as Iran’s trump card in attracting tourists. Independent, in a report by Sara Marshal has referred to the conditions of travel to Iran and direct flights to this country as a cause for growth of foreigners’ travel to Iran. Tourism industry in Iran enjoys very high potential for growth and development. According to the World Tourism Organization, Iran ranks 10th in terms of archeological and historic and 5th in terms of natural attractions. As per the 2015 report of tourism competitiveness of world economic forum, Iran ranks first in the field of price competitiveness, 9th in term of the number of the registered cultural heritage sites and 10th in the oral; and in other aspects such as the capacity of local airlines, the number of big sport stadiums, the quality of natural environment as well as cultural resources and commercial travel among over 140 countries Iran has gained the ranks between 30 to 44.
In conclusion, we should say that one of the most important events in the field of tourism is to occur in Iran in the next month. About 500 travel guides will travel to Iran on January 17, 2017 for attending the 17th round of the confederation. The world travel confederation guides become the guest of one of the candidate countries every two years and this is considered Iran’s first experience of hosting during the 33 year activity of the confederation.
The confederation program in Iran will take12 to 15 days and will be held in three parts of pre-confederation, the main ceremony and post-confederation. The travel guides visit the three cities of Qazvin, Zanjan and Hamedan. After that the main ceremony is held in Tehran for 5 days in which discussions are made on the election of the confederation board of directors, election of the host of the 18th round of the program and cultural nights. Then in the third part, travel guides set out for Shiraz and then Yazd, Isfahan, Kashan and finally Tehran. The confederation is considered a turning point for improving the infrastructures of Iran and will be attended by prominent figures in the field of world tourism.
FK/RM/ME
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